


notte di stelle e segreti

by starblessed



Category: I Medici | Medici: Masters of Florence (TV)
Genre: Drunkenness, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Late Night Conversations, Technically Breaking-and-Entering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:48:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: “Right," says Giuliano, with characteristic bluntness Lorenzo can’t help but appreciate. "Why is there a Pazzi falling over drunk in our garden?”It's an excellent question, and chances are, there's no good answer. Lorenzo decides to investigate anyways.





	notte di stelle e segreti

**Author's Note:**

> So, this one is set somewhere in the middle of Episode 4, and it's honestly just... a closer look at Francesco and Lorenzo's dynamic, because it's freaking fascinating.
> 
> I'm accepting (and currently working on) prompts from Tumblr, so if anyone wants to send me Medici S2 prompts, my tumblr is [roseluminated](http://roseluminated.tumblr.com/)!

Although they have, against all expectations, passed the point of being enemies... that does not make Francesco Pazzi a friend to the Medici family.

Befriending Francesco is like trying to make nice with a wolf, to puzzle out its thoughts in the critical seconds before it can rear back and attack you. It can be done, but the risk may outweigh the reward; you are never sure when he might turn around and snap. Past history has taught Lorenzo to be wary, to sew his lips shut and mind every word around his most unlikely of allies.

That’s as far as their acquaintance goes — allies, dancing on the tenuous precipice of friends. It does not mean they hold each other’s confidence, or trust. It certainly does not explain why, in the dead of night, Francesco Pazzi is lurking around the Medici palazzo.

To be fair, Francesco _lurks_ as a common rule. It seems to be his general state of existence, in a crowded hall or an empty one; if he is not lurking, he is swaggering. (Giuliano posited the theory that he does not know how to walk like an ordinary human being, and Lorenzo hasn’t been able to disprove it yet.) Still, Francesco’s visit is unexpected. Lorenzo didn’t summon him, and he wouldn’t come out of his own free will. Not to mention, it’s well after midnight. And their visitor, well... he hasn’t come in the front gate, and is certainly in no state to pay a courtesy call.

“Right, why is there a Pazzi falling over drunk in our garden?” demands Giuliano, with characteristic bluntness Lorenzo can’t help but appreciate.

“I have... no idea.”

It’s not the first time he’s found himself genuinely baffled by Francesco, but he prefers to do it on a bit more sleep.If this is some overture of goodwill, Francesco has missed the mark. He could have wished them a good evening hours earlier… before what appears to be enough wine to entertain an entire Pazzi-Medici wedding party. Lorenzo’s lips curl as he watches Francesco stumble down the garden path, trip over his own feet, and land in the sanctity of his mother’s favorite rose bush. Watching from high above the spectacle doesn’t quite do it justice, though the tall windows in the Medici palazzo make Francesco’s debauchery all the more obvious. Lorenzo bites back a sigh. He’s got a headache, a loan request from Milan to consider, and very little patience for this.

“Just... _just..._ get him out.” Giuliano sounds intensely uncomfortable with their flowerbeds harboring a drunken Francesco for the night. “You know how Mother treasures her garden. We can’t let an insect infestation get to it now.”

“He’s not an insect.”

Giuliano clicks his tongue. “That’s an opinion.”

A flash of his brother’s swollen face, dripping crimson past swollen lips to land on the silk of their mother’s dress, shoots like a bolt through Lorenzo’s mind; he still shudders at the memory. Giuliano’s vitriol can be allowed. He settles a hand on his brother’s shoulder, tearing his attention away from the window. When Giuliano looks up at him, barely-veiled frustration shines in his eyes.

“Go back to bed, brother,” Lorenzo sighs. “I will take care of this.”

Giuliano considers, natural instinct to argue waging war against the even stronger instinct not to get involved. Eventually, one wins out over the other. He trusts his brother’s authority as much as his own two fists, so when he relents it is only half a surprise. “If you need me,” Giuliano declares, slapping Lorenzo’s back, “shout. I’ll haul him out myself if need be.”

If Lorenzo has his way, need _won’t._ This newfound peace with the Pazzi cannot be jeopardized by... well, whatever has gotten into Francesco’s head tonight, besides the wine. His brother’s hot temper will do them no favors in keeping the peace, especially if Francesco is a rowdy drunk.

Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes plain that he is not. In the time it took Lorenzo to make it down to the gardens, their esteemed visitor has made no attempt to dislodge himself from the bush. Thorns dig into his exposed skin, scratching his face; there are leaves trapped in his untamed hair. A gardener is hovering nearby, hedge-trimmer in hand, unsure if he ought to use it; Lorenzo dismisses him with a wave of his hand.

“Francesco,” he says in a loud, clear voice, stopping just in front of the bush. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”

Francesco answers with a groan. It would be more worrying if, as Lorenzo recalls from the evening of the Pazzi-Medici union, Francesco weren’t an _impressive_ lightweight… and if there were not a sharp branch digging into his thigh. He cannot be comfortable, but this is apparently not motivation enough for him to try to get out. If he has tried, it has brought no results, nor proved a fatal blow to his dignity.

“I am,” declares Francesco, with all the gravitas of a man prepared to address the Pope himself, “in a flower bush.”

“It appears you are,” agrees Lorenzo. “Need a hand?”

He offers, but Francesco is just as quick to bat the aid aside. It’s probably a bad decision, because just seconds later he tips over, ending up with a face full of concrete. When he lifts his head, he appears utterly affronted, and more than a little bruised. Lorenzo pats his shoulder.

“Not to worry, you didn’t break the stone.” Maybe the same can’t be said about Francesco’s face. “But I would not advise moving again.”

Francesco lets out a grunt which probably means, in some incomprehensible Pazzi dialect, _I’ll do what I want._ In this case, he apparently wants to flop back down on the pavement, throwing his arms out at his sides. It’s better than another assault on the rose bushes, however, so Lorenzo decides to play along. He lowers himself down to the pavement, taking a seat at Francesco’s side.

For a moment, neither of them speak. It is a warm evening. The stars are bright overhead, glittering against an indigo canvas; over the garden walls, Lorenzo can just see the tops of Florence’s tallest buildings reaching up with winding spires and gilded limbs. If man could choose a night to climb as high as he is meant to go, to capture a tiny piece of the heavens for himself to preserve forever, this would be the seeming to do it. The world seems utterly peaceful — even if, as Lorenzo knows too well, it is anything but.

“Do you ever think,” Francesco asks suddenly, “about what could have been? When we were children, if — if we’d been raised differently. If the world didn’t twist its way around us, even then, ‘til it… ‘til it was able to strangle us. You ever wonder how we might be different?”

“No,” replies Lorenzo, though he has thought upon it too many times to count. “Never.”

“Me neither,” Francesco says, and sounds as if he means it. “No point. The past is the past.”

“And there is no point reaching into our histories to grasp at intangible bits of ourselves. We can only… move forward, in the certainty that we will be better.”

Francesco’s head tips back, lips curling, as if Lorenzo’s high-minded ideals have freely disgusted him… but his eyes are bright with drink, and that almost makes him look hopeful.

Does Francesco have an ideal self? Does his concept of self stretch outside of the branches of his family tree? Has he embraced the humanistic ideals which have swept Florence so completely over the past century — the concept of finding oneself, of forming an identity separate from the one your birth assigns you?

Lorenzo’s grandfather considered himself a humanist, but he also knew what it meant to be a Medici… and he wove that dignity into the fabric of Lorenzo’s young mind, into every generation which would follow him. Being a Pazzi means just as much, as do all those old names of Florentine nobility. Can one ever be truly independent, under the eyes of God and the name of one’s family?

Could their lives have ever truly been different?

“An’ where do you wanna end up… moving forward?” drawls Francesco, slicing through the thick fog of Lorenzo’s thoughts. His words are growing heavier now, slurred with drink and apparent exhaustion. “You wanna be… one of the _great men_ they write stories about, ‘n tell hundreds of years on?”

Frankly, Lorenzo is not overly-concerned about what stories will be told of him, centuries on from now. If he has his way, he intends to write them. Should his trusted hand pen his own history, he is confident the world will not forget him.

A curious gaze strays over to Francesco, brows raising. “Do you?”

Francesco considers this for a moment, blinking up at the sky, before shaking his head. “Nah. The moments… _these_ moments, right now… they’re what count. They are what history’ll ‘member.” He waves a hand. “‘N if they don’t remember me, damn them.”

Deep down, Lorenzo suspects he does not mean it. There is a melancholy in his eyes, even as he turns them on Lorenzo.

“But you’d never be happy with that, would you? No… you, you Medici don’t want to ever be forgotten.”

When he utters the word _Medici,_ it strikes to the heart — not as a collective term, encompassing Lorenzo’s entire family. Francesco is not referring to them… only the Medici sitting beside him.

The worst part is, he’s right. Lorenzo can not stand the idea of being forgotten.

“Which is why I won’t be,” he answers simply.

Perhaps the certainty of the statement drains him — or, perhaps, what he must surely view as arrogance. Francesco snorts and slumps back on the pavement, head connecting against the stone with a clunk. Lorenzo winces, making to rise to his feet.

“I will fetch a servant to help you inside. You cannot travel home in this state, but our spare rooms —“

“I don’t need it!” Francesco growls. A subsequent attempt to haul himself up ends with him on his side, rolling, like a bumblebee swatted from the air. Lorenzo’s brows tug together. He watches the spectacle for a few drawn out moments, more out of curiosity than pity, before holding out a hand.

This time, Francesco takes it.

One swift tug brings him upright. Perched precariously on unsteady feet, Francesco sways like a candle flame in the wind. He seems just as surprised to be standing -- with the aid of a Medici, no less -- as Lorenzo is that he accepted help. For a moment, the two only stare at each other, blinking in the evening light.

“Why did you come here tonight?” Lorenzo finally asks (ignoring the more intriguing question, _how on earth did you get in?)_

Francesco seems to weigh all the answers he _could_ give — that the Pazzi palazzo has grown terribly lonely with brother and uncle at odds, that his mind was crowded with no release except drink, that they are not friends but they are _not exactly enemies,_ are they — and settles on giving none at all.

“I don’t know. Why’d you come out to help me?”

“That,” replies Lorenzo, “is an excellent question.”

He offers his reluctant ally an arm — and, because Francesco has not surprised him enough tonight, it is accepted. Together, they weave out of the gardens, Lorenzo guiding a stumbling Francesco in his wake as one set of footsteps grow heavy. By the time they reach the palazzo, Francesco is dead on his feet. Once they have at last made it to a guest room, it is all he can do to keep himself standing. Lorenzo sees him off to bed without a word.

In the silence that follows, he hears the echo of a dozen questions gone unanswered. Thoughts of what those answers may be follow him into the night.

 

 

 

 

 _(Giuliano cuts a makeshift rope ladder down from the back gate the next morning, so at least that’s_ one _question answered.)_


End file.
